American race car driver and television personality Jessi Combs has been killed in a crash while attempting to set a new land speed record.
Combs’ family confirmed that she had died in a crash in a jet-powered car in south-east Oregon, but further details were not immediately released.
According to BBC, Combs, 39, had been dubbed the “fastest woman on four wheels”.She earned the title in 2013 when she reached 398 mph (641km/h). Combs was trying to beat that speed and the absolute women’s land speed record of 512 mph (824km/h) set by Kitty O’Neil in 1976 when she crashed.
“Jessi’s most notable dream was to become the fastest woman on Earth, a dream she had been chasing since 2012… and she left this Earth driving faster than any other woman in history,” her family said.
Her teammate Terry Madden also paid tribute to her on social media. “Unfortunately we lost her yesterday in a horrific accident, I was the first one there and trust me we did everything humanly possible to save her,” he said in an Instagram post on Wednesday.
Born in South Dakota in 1980, Combs developed a love of racing and machinery from a young age with the encouragement of her family. She went to Wyoming’s WyoTech college and graduated top of her class with a degree in Custom Automotive Fabrication. The college’s marketing department hired her soon afterwards to build a car from scratch for charity, launching her metalworking career.
Combs soon began appearing on a number of television shows, serving for a time as co-host of the series Xtreme 4×4, where she showed off her skills building and modifying cars for off-road racing. Combs encouraged other women into the metalworking business. She was one of the creators of Real Deal, a programme to teach engineering skills to women.
But aside from her metalwork and television careers, Combs was also a prolific competitive racer. She joined the North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger team in 2013, with whom she reached her top speed of 398 mph.
